Shark Talk with Authors Emily Habeck & Greg Skomal

Titcomb’s Bookshop is thrilled to present a conversation with debut author Emily Habeck, Shark Heart (on sale August 8th), and marine biologist, shark expert, and author Greg Skomal, Chasing Shadows (on sale July 11th). They will be speaking about their new books in this author talk on Tuesday August 29th at 6:30pm at the Sandwich Public Library. (Please Note, we have changed the venue to accommodate more attendees!)

This is a free event, but registration is required and space is limited. Registration can be completed on www.titcombsbookshop.com or by calling the store at 508-888-2331.

Books will be for sale at the event, and the authors will sign them after their presentation. Those who are unable to attend the event may order signed copies of Shark Heart and Chasing Shadows on Titcomb’s Bookshop’s website or by calling 508-888-2331.

ABOUT SHARK HEART

“Shark Heart is a fantastical, original, and beautifully-written novel of abandonment, love, and Ovidian transformation. It explores illness, caretaking, devotion, magical thinking, and loss—and of course great white sharks—in ways that are funny, sad, and surprising. Every page bursts with heart.”

—Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land

A gorgeous debut novel of marriage, motherhood, metamorphosis, and letting go, this intergenerational love story begins with newlyweds Wren and her husband, Lewis—a man who, over the course of nine months, transforms into a great white shark.

For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will gradually turn into a great white shark. As Lewis develops the features and impulses of one of the most predatory creatures in the ocean, his complicated artist’s heart struggles to make peace with his unfulfilled dreams.

At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with a college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds. Woven throughout this bold novel is the story of Wren’s mother, Angela, who becomes pregnant with Wren at fifteen in an abusive relationship amidst her parents’ crumbling marriage. In the present, all of Wren’s grief eventually collides, and she is forced to make an impossible choice.

A sweeping love story that is at once lyrical and funny, airy and visceral, Shark Heart is an unforgettable, gorgeous novel about life’s perennial questions, the fragility of memories, finding joy amidst grief, and creating a meaningful life. This daring debut marks the arrival of a wildly talented new writer abounding with originality, humor, and heart.

ABOUT AUTHOR EMILY HABECK

Emily Habeck is an alumna of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, where she received a BFA in theatre, as well as Vanderbilt Divinity School and Vanderbilt’s Peabody College. She is from Ardmore, Oklahoma. Shark Heart is her first novel.

ABOUT CHASING SHADOWS

Dr. Greg Skomal, one of the leading great white shark experts in the country, reveals the true nature of these mysterious apex predators, as well as the fascinating story behind their history and startling resurgence.

With its quaint villages, local restaurants serving up lobster rolls, and miles and miles of warm, sandy beaches, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is famous for being America’s carefree seaside getaway. But in August 2012, the first confirmed white shark attack in almost eighty years occurred in the region. As shark sightings quickly began to increase on Cape Cod and elsewhere, and large beachside billboards warning about the growing shark population became a common sight, a boogie boarder died after being attacked by a great white shark in Cape Cod’s shallow waters. What had changed to cause news of human-shark interactions to go from being a rarity to being the new normal? As some citizens called for shark culls, nets, drone surveillance, and other extreme solutions, interactions between local residents and scientists, politicians, and those responsible for public safety became tense and frantic.

Dr. Greg Skomal, a shark biologist whose lifelong passion has been to gain a more refined understanding of great white sharks, was at the center of it all. This is the story of the great white shark’s return to the eastern seaboard, told through the life of the scientist who found himself in the oftentimes thankless position of having to balance conservation efforts and the drive to do important science with panic and fear in the court of public opinion. Greg has spent decades on a quest to tag, track, and demystify this animal, using every high- and low-tech method at his disposal, including those he invented, and he frequently comes face-to-face with these shadows of the deep. He leaves no stone unturned in his pursuit of the secrets behind the largely unknown lives of these charismatic creatures and in his duty to solve the intricate puzzle of how humans can coexist alongside them. Chasing Shadows is a too-rare conservation success story about restoring an apex predator to an ecosystem that provides a profound, new understanding of a beast so notoriously fierce that it’s nearly impossible to imagine how vulnerable it truly is.

ABOUT AUTHOR GREG SKOMAL

Dr. Greg Skomal—in addition to being an accomplished marine biologist, underwater explorer, photographer, and author—is a leading white shark expert in the Atlantic. He is a senior fisheries biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and currently directs the Massachusetts Shark Research Program. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Intercampus Marine Science graduate program; an adjunct scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts; and a member of the Explorers Club and the Boston Sea Rovers. Greg has authored dozens of scientific research papers and has appeared in a number of film and television documentaries, including programs for National Geographic, Discovery Channel, PBS, and numerous television networks. He is a regular on Shark Week and Shark Fest and is the author of The Shark Handbook. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Rhode Island and a PhD from Boston University. He lives with his family in Marion, Massachusetts.